October 18
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A court acquitted Kobad Ghandy
of all charges in a six-year-old case accusing him of delivering
two "anti-national" speeches at Punjabi University in Patiala.
Additional Sessions and District Judge Mohammad Gulzar passed
the order after the case was heard on a day-to-day basis from
September 27. Ghandy (66) had pleaded that he was booked for delivering
the lectures in April and May 2009, when the CPI-Maoist was not
banned. The organisation was banned in June 22, 2009, he had argued.
Ghandy told presspersons after the acquittal that he had disassociated
himself from the banned organisation. The prosecution had a list
of 13 witnesses, of whom one could not be produced and was shown
as untraceable. Ghandy was booked in January 2010 by the Patiala
Sadar Police under sections 10, 13, 18 and 20 of the UAPA and
sections 419 and 120-B of the IPC for holding meetings on the
premises of the university in 2009, in an alleged bid to promote
Maoist ideology. He was brought here from Cherlapally Central
Jail, Telangana on September 27. The case was concluded in 20
days.
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